I'm currently running CS4 Prod Prem on a 64-bit Win7 machine. My question is specific to AfterFX but whatever upgrade helps it run faster should help the rest of the suite as well, at least to some degree.

My question is, where would I see the "most bang for the buck" do you think - upgrading from 12G of RAM to 24G or going with CS5 Prod Prem?

I realize there are many potential bottlenecks but I've minimized them pretty well throughout the system (Intel 6-core, SSDs), at least as much as I can now.

If you had to choose only one upgrade would you go for CS5 or would you double the RAM?

I ask because AfterFX is a 64-bit app in CS5 so it'll use all the RAM I can give it. But I'm not sure doubling the RAM will help very much in CS4.

> If you had to choose only one upgrade would you go for CS5 or would you double the RAM?

I ask because AfterFX is a 64-bit app in CS5 so it'll use all the RAM I can give it. But I'm not sure doubling the RAM will help very much in CS4.

Of course, I'm biased. But I honestly think that the best bet is to upgrade to CS5.

Yes, CS4 can get some advantages from more RAM, but only from the use of more cores using the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneoulsy multiprocessing feature.

But there are a _lot_ of performance and stability improvements in After Effects CS5, and only After Effects CS5 will allow a single process to use more than a few GB of RAM, so you can have longer RAM previews, work with larger images, and so on.

Seriously, thanks for your reply. I had a feeling that was the answer. I wanted to be sure because 12G RAM is about 1/2 the price of the upgrade.

The good news is, according to an email I got recently from Adobe, there's a "10% Off" deal running till the end of the month. Nice how that works out...

I'm sure with CS5 the "extra" 12G will be even more useful. But meanwhile at least I'll know the bottleneck isn't the application itself. ...so psyched to finally break past that ~3-sec RAM preview (on HD footage)...probably be buying those sticks sooner than I planned...!

Thanks again Todd for sharing your thoughts, and for the links. I appreciate it very much.